Metrical-prosodic and stylistic study of the liber i de Christiados, by Alexander Rossaeus.

Abstract

Scottish autor Alexander Rossaeus wrote a large amount of books and treaties on several different subjects. It’s widely known that he had to face problems and delicate situations due to his conservative points of view, in a time when part of his society and many intellectuals had started to look ahead towards modernity and new trends.
We have here focused our attention on Rossaeus’ wide knowledge of the Latin language, specifically of the Mantuan poet Virgil’s work.
Rossaeus was an expert in the dactylic hexameter, a verse meter used by Virgil in his huge poetic poems.
In Alexander Rossaeus ’centons we have verified that in every there is, at least, one word written by the Mantuan in every verse of Christiados, but in most of them half of the verse or more was taken by Rossaeus from Virgil’s works without losing the hexameter rhythm.
The Scottish clergyman wrote his verses masterfully, giving evidence of his great knowledge of Virgil’s works and his competence in metrics and stylistics.
In a detailed study we discover that A. Rossaeus not only uses the accurate vocabulary, but also builds similar structures and knows thoroughly literary and stylistic figures of poetry. We find and give examples of enjambements, sinalefas, anastrophes, anaphoras, polysyndetons and many others reflected all through our study. Besides, we detail the metric scansion and caesuras that mark up the rhythm of each verse.